1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to mobile telecommunication systems. In particular, the present invention relates to a novel and improved graphical user interface, method and electronic device for forming guiding lines in a graphical user interface of an electronic device
2. Description of the Related Art
The size of the display of an electronic device sets certain limits for presenting, e.g. digital information on the display. A small display is not the best place to present a large amount of information. If all of the information is presented on the display at a time, details become illegible. A solution to this problem is that a so-called virtual desktop is used. There the actual view of the digital information is (much more) greater than the size of the display device. Therefore, means for scrolling the information is needed. This is achieved, e.g. with scroll bars located on the display.
Even if scroll bars are not used, there still are drawbacks with the present solutions. The biggest problem is that when the material to be presented on the display is considerably larger than the display area, the current location within the material is not well perceived. Let us say, a hand-held device, e.g. a Portable Digital Assistant (PDA), consists of a map application. The map comprises an area of which only 1/10000 can be presented on the display of the hand-held device at a time. In other words, the map constitutes e.g. of a 100×100 two-dimensional matrix. The user of the hand-held device can move within the map, e.g. using scroll bars or some other method or means. When map element x:20 y:20 is presented on the display, it very hard to conclude how far it is e.g. to a desired element x:70 y:65. The situation becomes even more difficult when the user is allowed to use a zoom function.
There are many prior-art solutions to the above-mentioned problems. As said earlier, a user may be provided with scroll bars. Another solution is that when moved within a digital material, e.g. a map, the user is provided with coordinate readings. Yet another solution is to show the coordinate reading of the cursor on the display. Yet another solution is to show the map grids on the display.
There are, however, several problems with the prior-art solutions. The problem with the scroll bars is that they need a certain amount of display space, the space already being limited. The problem is the same when presenting the coordinates numerically. When map coordinates are used, the user is not aware of his/her relative position on the whole map. Instead of, the coordinates express only certain measure scale of the digital material. Coordinates do not promote quick navigation.
Small devices, e.g. the display size of which is less than 10 inches, often use notably bigger virtual desktop than the actual display area. So, it may very hard for the user quickly to perceive the exact location on the virtual desktop. Therefore, it is for example difficult to return to a certain active area of the operating system, where specific functions or activities are started by activating, e.g. objects or icons. Moreover, it is difficult to move from an application to another on the virtual desktop if the accurate location of the destination application is not clear. Because the display devices are already small, display space should be reserved for the actual applications as much as possible. Most prior-art navigation solutions take their own parts of the display areas.